Manager, Prior Authorization

👋 Meet knownwell https://www.knownwell.co/, weight-inclusive healthcare for all. Join a dynamic company that is changing the way obesity care is delivered. We offer weight management, primary care, nutrition counseling, and health coaching. Our care model combines in-clinic and virtual care to bring support to patients where and when they need it.

Backed by $50M in funding—including a $25M https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/knownwell-secures-25m-oversubscribed-funding-roundround https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/hlth25-cvs-health-ventures-backs-knownwells-25m-round-scale-iobesity-care-model led by CVS Health Ventures with support from a16z Bio + Health, Flare Capital, MassMutual, and Intermountain Ventures—we’re scaling fast and expanding access to evidence-based obesity care nationwide.

🔍 We are looking to build our team with a Manager, Prior Authorization to lead the team responsible for securing insurance approval for patients' obesity management medications and other prescribed treatments. This is a high-visibility operational leadership role: Prior Authorization turnaround time and communication directly shape whether patients can start and stay on their prescribed care plan, and this role owns that outcome end to end.

You'll manage a team of Prior Authorization specialists across in-house and outsourced/BPO resources, own the vendor relationship for outsourced capacity, and drive continuous improvement in how the team tracks, escalates, and resolves authorization requests. You'll report into Central Operations leadership and work cross-functionally with clinicians, Patient Experience Coordinators, and Patient Access.

🎯 You Will:

• Manage and coach a team of Prior Authorization specialists, including performance management, scheduling/coverage planning, and staffing continuity across in-house and BPO/EOR resources.

• Own the outsourced staffing vendor relationship, including capacity planning and quality oversight.

• Own Prior Authorization turnaround time, coverage rate, and backlog metrics; build and maintain visibility into team performance for leadership.

• Drive structured status tracking and work-list management in Athena and CoverMyMeds, ensuring every request has a clear, current status and owner.

• Own and evolve Prior Authorization competency frameworks, training materials, and SOPs so the team handles complex payer requirements (including GLP-1 and other obesity management medication authorizations) consistently and correctly.

• Partner directly with clinicians on cases with unusual complexity or turnaround/communication issues, exercising independent judgment on escalations and physician relations.

• Identify and fix breakdowns in process or tooling (e.g., macros, escalation paths, notification workflows) that create patient-facing failures.

• Lead hiring, onboarding, and ramp-up of new Prior Authorization team members.

• Report on Prior Authorization performance and risk to Central Operations leadership, flagging staffing or payer-side issues early and proactively.

🌟 You Have:

• 5-7 years of prior authorization experience, including 3+ years in a leadership role managing a Prior Authorization or similar insurance-facing operations team.

• Deep working knowledge of the Prior Authorization lifecycle, payer requirements, and tools like CoverMyMeds and an EHR (Athena strongly preferred).

• Experience managing distributed or blended teams (in-house + BPO/outsourced), including vendor management.

• A track record of building process and measuring it — you default to structured tracking and metrics, not tribal knowledge.

• Strong cross-functional communication skills; comfortable being the connective tissue between clinicians, operations, and patients.

• Calm under staffing or volume pressure, with a bias toward fixing root causes rather than patching symptoms.

• Familiarity with GLP-1s or obesity management medications, and a genuine investment in weight-inclu